People attending the 1981 movie premiere of “Polyester” received a numbered scratch-and-sniff card.

The movie watcher smelled what was being shown on the screen of this “Odorama”-promoted movie when prompted to scratch and sniff a specific card number.

The history of dispensing theater movie and stage-play related aromas before an audience goes back to the beginnings of the 20th century.

In 1906, Samuel Lionel Rothafel, who worked at The Family Theater in Forest City, PA, came up with an idea.

While a motion picture newsreel film of the 1906 Rose Bowl parade played inside the theater, Rothafel took a wad of cotton wool, soaked it with rose oil and placed it in front of an electric fan directed towards the seated audience.

The fruity fragrance of roses wafted throughout the theater amid the now delighted seated patrons.

It seems as if Rothafel used good-old Minnesota ingenuity  in fact, he did. Samuel Lionel Rothafel was born in Stillwater in 1882.

By 1933, Paramount’s Rialto Theater on Broadway had installed an in-theater “smell system” using fan blowers which released various aromas during a movie.

After the movie was over, it took hours (sometimes days) for the odors to disappear from inside the theater building. This particular smell-system eventually proved unpopular.

During the late 1950s, Hans Laube invented a scent-dispensing machine.

Laube’s machine discharged a variety of smells coinciding with the events occurring during a theater movie or theatrical play.

Various mixtures and dilutions of liquid scented perfumes; including a scent neutralizer, were also dispensed.